This article reminds of the 1990-1992 real estate down turn. I had a relative back then who owned commercial property. They showed up one morning to find the building stripped of all copper guttering and down spouts.

A review in today from Ulli G. Niemann a Registered Investment Advisor in Orange County, CA:

Hello Michael, I just wanted to let you know that I featured one of your books on my blog today. The link is [here]. I’ve enjoyed both of your books, especially since I’ve been a trend follower, or trend tracker as I call it, since the 1980′s. I wanted my 17,000 newsletter readers to share in your findings as I am constantly battling the mindless Buy and Hope syndrome. Thanks for your great work.

Read.

After 9/11 in an effort to do “something” the Department of Homeland Security was created. Now it appears that in the wake of too many people bidding up the prices of homes to unsustainable levels the government will now solve the basic problems with human wiring (read: behavioral finance) by creating a new bureaucracy to stop the next bubble from occurring. What would we do without politicians?

From the wires:

March 28 (Bloomberg) — U.S. regulators are investigating whether traders spread false rumors about Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s financial soundness to profit from a drop in the company’s share price, two people familiar with the probe said.

Here is the chart. Now explain to me how “Bobby” badmouthing Lehman Brothers to “Timmy” is responsible for that chart? Are we going to go back in time and figure out how exactly that spike down happened? But isn’t the trend right back down again? What a waste of time and money by the government.

Image of Arabic “Trend Following” cover.

This is pathetic. A big scam organized and maintained by politicians with the consent of a very ill-informed public. Why does this institution exist again?

Practice and more practice.

Uh oh. Does this mean we are all nuts?

From the AP today:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The trustees of Social Security and Medicare are certain to kick off a fierce round of debate when they release their annual assessment of the fiscal health of the government’s two biggest benefit programs. The battle will be waged not only between the Democratic-controlled Congress and President Bush but also in this year’s presidential campaign, where the issue is expected to attract a lot of attention in light of the looming retirement of 78 million baby boomers. All sides will try to use Tuesday’s report to score political points, but that is probably as far as the debate will go — at least until a new president takes office next year. Bush, who had vowed to make overhauling Social Security a top priority of his second term, will almost certainly leave office with that goal unfulfilled given that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, his point person on the issue, has not made any headway with Democrats in Congress in finding a compromise to resolve the pension program’s fiscal problems. Democrats contend that Bush lost valuable time after his 2004 re-election pushing a plan to allow younger workers to direct their payroll tax contributions into private accounts, an idea that went nowhere in Congress. The new report is expected to make only small changes in the estimates made last year for when both trust funds will be depleted. Last year’s report put the date for when Social Security would exhaust its trust fund resources at 2041 with the same date for Medicare put much sooner at 2019. Medicare is facing much more imminent problems because of soaring health care costs.

Why does a so-called retirement plan, an investment fund, exist when it generates 1.2% return? In the real world a trader with that return would be fired.

A nice overview from the owner of the Dallas Mavericks: dos and don’t dos on startups.